WENTY-YEAR-OLD Rahma Chtaiki will celebrate the new year the way many Americans celebrate Christmas.

She'll give gifts to her family and friends. She'll send out greeting cards. On the evening of Dec. 31, she'll eat a large, carefully prepared dinner of chicken and many side dishes with her family.

Chtaiki moved to Fredericksburg from Morocco two years ago with her mother and sister. Christmas isn't observed there, so New Year's is one of the biggest celebrations, she said.

"We give presents, just like Christmas. The little kids get toys."

Even though the Chtaiki family lives in the United States now, they still ring in the new year the way they did in Morocco.

On New Year's Eve, there will be "music, some dancing, some drinking," said Chtaiki, who takes English classes through the Regional Adult Education program.

They'll make a big cake decorated with "2005." At midnight, she said, "we blow out a big candle."

In 2000, more than 10,000 people across the region were foreign-born, according to the U.S. Census.

When folks immigrate to the United States from another country, many, like Chtaiki, bring their cultures with them.

While the holidays mean family and roots and home to most, it makes sense that people celebrate the way they've always celebrated, the way their parents and grandparents celebrated.

They mark Christmas and New Year's Eve traditionally, with customs unique to their native countries.

Minty Flude is a fifth-grade teacher at Stafford's Widewater Elementary, on exchange here from England for a year. Her family will join her for the Christmas holiday, and they'll celebrate traditionally.

The family starts Christmas morning with a glass of Bucks Fizz, a cocktail of champagne and orange juice. While they drink, they open presents.

Back in England, the Fludes would have gone to a nearby pub to have a celebratory drink with friends, followed by a stroll home.

"Many people wear paper hats and pull crackers," Flude wrote in an e-mail. Crackers are tubes covered in paper with little prizes inside. You pull a tab to open it, and it makes a popping noise.

Dinner is always an elaborate meal. Flude chooses the first course, "usually something like pate and toast or shrimp cocktail," she said.

Then they eat turkey, roasted and mashed potatoes, braised red cabbage, roasted parsnips and more. Christmas pudding is the final dish.